


The Best Worst Thing

by genmitsu



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fight Club AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 05:49:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genmitsu/pseuds/genmitsu
Summary: An experimental Fight Club AU with Jim and Oswald.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Jim Gordon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	The Best Worst Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harawata-8889](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=harawata-8889).

> I'm sure you guys saw those pics and GIFs of Ben in a cage fight from his OC show.  
Ever since I saw them I was thinking about a Fight Club AU :) So here it is.  
It's not too complex, to be honest, but I hope you like it.

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you _ do not talk _about Fight Club. The words ring through Jim’s head, bounce off the walls of his brainpan whenever he misses a punch. His cheek is bleeding, there’s a gash on his forehead as well, and the blood trickles down his temple. His knuckles sting. He misses another punch that lands him straight on the floor. Jim gasps for air desperately, and the time is slowing down, as if moving alongside and through him like water. Then the hum of the voices grows louder, becoming a wave that crests and shoots him upward, to his feet. He moves faster now, catching his opponent off guard - a punch, and another one, uppercut to his jaw - the opponent collapses on the floor. Jim straightens up, and smiles back at the person giving him an appreciative look.

Oswald.

He’s there in the crowd, looking up at him and smiling. Not with his lips, oh no, that would be too obvious. It’s his eyes that smile at him, and, honestly, Jim could die for that smile.

He leaves the fighting floor, wiping the blood off his forehead, and he’s surrounded by people who congratulate him and slap his shoulders or his back - and he’s all sweaty and it feels nasty, but who cares, when he’s trying his best to get through this crowd to Oswald - he’s right there, he’s just within his reach…

Oswald, Oswald, Oswald! the voices all around him rumble and roar, rising higher, confusing Jim, hoisting him up and carrying him forward. He’s in some eddy of hands, bodies, greedy eyes catching his every move, hungry for some revelations that he knows he is unable to give them. They continue to stare and wait, like baby chicks - just as stupid, hungry and greedy.

Those that are different fight hardly more often than Jim does. They already know, they already understand, and they don’t have to get hit in the face to get it. Their energies are aimed towards other things. They are few.

Oswald - they owe it all to him. He showed them, hit that first punch that made them come to their senses, he split Jim’s lips and cut through that veil on his eyes, and now his name is roared all around as Jim sits on someone’s shoulders and talks to the people like Oswald did; and he can’t speak as well as Oswald does, but they listen to him and he continues, the fake, the liar, the substitute of the messiah none of them can find.

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you _ do not talk _about Fight Club. Fight clean. Stop the fight if the opponent goes limp or taps out. No lies.

No lies.

They all break this rule, all of them. How dare they! Why do they all nod and smile understandingly whenever he asks about Oswald? This drives Jim mad, he literally sees red spots before his eyes, worse than those corrida bulls, and he finally snaps. He will get the answer, the _ truthful _ answer from the person who was unlucky enough to grin knowingly at him again instead of telling the truth. Jim punches him in the face, hits him in the stomach and presses his arm to his throat - maybe this will drive the point home, that he’s serious.

The guy calls him Oswald and babbles something about a test and apologises profusely as if he’s a child being punished, or worse, if he’s a pup that made a mess. Jim releases him, wiping his hands on his pants in disgust. The answer didn’t make anything clear.

Jim is confused as he studies the tickets and documents he found in his bag. They all have the name 'Oswald Gordon' on them, and this makes Jim uneasy - he’s completely sure that Oswald had a different surname. He couldn’t have such an ordinary one. It’s his surname, Jim’s. But why is the name not his? What is happening, what is he doing here, pretending?

Everything goes too far, and Jim is unable to focus. It’s not surprising that during one of the missions - and again, who gave them this mission? was it Jim? Oswald? both of them? but how? - Jim gets distracted and loses his group, and then there’s a flash and a hit over his whole body, and there’s no pain but Jim knows it would just come later.

Light ceiling, light walls, light pyjamas. His bruised knuckles look so out of place in this sterile kingdom of formaldehyde and antiseptics. Doctors come to him, talk to him - he never responds - but they call him ‘Jim’ and it means more than they could imagine. He spends so much time here. His knuckles heal and only a small scar near his pinky reminds him of what has been.

When he’s discharged, the puzzle in his head is complete. Stress, trauma, some remnants of his PTSD after the army service - and he slipped into another personality, making himself anew, building upon an impression of something or someone - it’s too ephemeral, too hard to understand completely, but it’s not even important now. Now he, Jim Gordon, knows what has happened.

Oswald is a product of his imagination. Same as the punch he gave Jim, the same punch that excited and aroused him more than anything before, that still aroused him that much even if Jim felt ashamed to admit it even to himself. And Oswald’s attraction, his charisma, those hypnotically beautiful lips Jim wanted to kiss over and over - all of it wasn’t real. Jim should’ve realised it earlier. After all, no way such a perfectly attractive and beautiful person could exist, and in no way would he pay attention to someone like Jim.

Jim almost misses his days of madness. Now his life is boring and dreary, because there’s no Oswald in it, and there never was - and never will be. But then Jim sees him in a cafe.

Jim pales, blushes, sweats and wonders if his madness is back, and bits hard on his lip. Who knew you could miss a hallucination so much your heart was ready to burst in your chest? Oswald, Oswald, Oswald…

“Mister Cobblepot,” the waiter addresses him then, and it makes Jim come to his senses.

Oswald Cobblepot. It sounds right.

Jim is accidentally on purpose, purposefully accidental in stumbling on him as they exit the cafe, and he apologizes and devours Oswad with his eyes, never managing to satiate himself. That smile, almost shy, those wonderful lips, those eyes - Jim wants to pin Oswald to the wall and make him moan his name, right this instant.

Instead, he somehow manages to ask him out.

It takes three dates before Jim is able to pin Oswald to the wall. Oswald moans into his mouth, melting under Jim’s hands, so hot, so gentle, so _ passionate_.

So real.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a vague reference to Fall Out Boy song "American Beauty/American Psycho" :)


End file.
